Why call it head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes)?

Why head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes)?

This is well known song to adults and its gets learn as a child.  I have done projects with under primary age children and I have used it knowing it will be familiar. From a dance perspective you name body parts and from that you can lead into initiating from those parts into a more creative tasks, it prefaces a basic body knowledge. At school you name body parts, in the early days of foreign language you learn the noun for 'hand' or 'head' in case you need to tell a doctor what hurts. Most young children I imagine would also understand they have skin, a brain, a skeleton maybe......

Unless you independently seek out physiological knowledge you may not progress very far from this conceptual of body and one that is crucially about units rather than systems. This summer at Impulztanz Festival, Vienna, I was studying a module on Myofascial Reflex; The Psoas Connection with Kirsten Kussmaul. It is the most in depth I have progressed to far in my physiological knowledge in connection with exploratory bodywork or  'experiential anatomy'.   The first tangible step to arriving there in Vienna started 13 or so years ago. Pain is an amazing teacher and having my first full time training dance injury explained systemically to me by my physiotherapist (Paul O'Hara= amazing) made me realise with excitement and renewed respect the complexity and intelligence of the body. Furthermore, the proximity of these systems as the reality of the environment of the body revealed itself further when one day I was confused as to why lower back pain, period pain and digestive trouble were appearing at times in isolation, as clusters or a pair that progressed to all three, I was reminded that all these three areas of the body rest next to, inside or around each other. There is problem in the neighbourhood. It seems to obvious but in actuality it was a paradigm shift from seperateness to connectivity.

It occurred to me at Impulztanz that perhaps our conceptual of our physical self would be very different if we sang a different song at school. That perhaps this amazing body of knowledge would be sought out more hungrily if it had not been limited by the idea of perfunctory units. I have tried (and failed:.)) to conceive of a catchy song involving circulatory, skeletal or limbic systems, or indicate the organs or fascia as no less key players by virtue of their lack of visibility. That one end of the body is intimately and directly connected to the opposite is a paradigm shift that is enabling and humbling.

For me this paradigm shift that uses the body as a source of wisdom and knowledge, that uses the body as a metaphor for bigger ecologies and that acknowledges connectivity and interdependance creates a world that moves away from I think therefore I am, I think therefore I am better, I shop therefore I am and I shop therefore I am better than you to a sustainable community in good health.